


Leverage, Season 1, Episode 1, The Nigerian Job

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Leverage
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Episode: s01e01 The Nigerian Job, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 01, Series Premiere, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:34:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24310645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode and the rest of the series. Complete.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 5





	Leverage, Season 1, Episode 1, The Nigerian Job

Open to Nathan Ford drinking in an aeroplane bar. His title-card declares him an ex-insurance investigator.

From what I’ve been reading, Nate’s probably the most divisive character the show has, and I can largely see this. Timothy Hutton is a fantastic actor, but as the creators and large amounts of fandom have said, Nate is not a good man. He does largely try to do good things, but unlike the others, even this is always tainted by him equating illegal=automatically bad, and so, he’s always going to be angry for not being able to do these good things in a purely legal manner despite the fact a big part of him likes being a Machiavellian outlaw.

Victor Dubenich comes over to talk to Nate, and he eventually convinces Nate to work with a team Victor’s assembled to steal something in exchange for a heavy payout plus getting revenge on Nate’s old insurance company. This last part seals the deal since: Nate’s old insurance company refused to pay for his prepubescent son Sam’s experimental cancer treatment, and now, Sam is dead.

This conversation is intercut with Nate and the others meeting one another and performing the heist. Nate’s in a building across the street from the one they’re robbing.

First up is Alec Hardison: Internet and Computer Fraud. He’s not impressed with the technology they’ll be using, and so, he’ll be substituting some of it with his own superior versions. There’s a flashback of him getting caught attempting to fool a hotel into thinking he’s Mick Jagger, and this flashback reveals: He’s a geek who likes pretty women, but there’s no indication he’s misogynistic or sexist, and that’s really nice.

In the present, he gives Eliot Spencer an earbud.

“You’re not as useless as you look,” Eliot comments. His title-card is: Retrieval Specialist.

When I first started watching Leverage, the only thing I knew Christian Kane from was Angel, and for all I thought Linsdey was an interesting character, I never considered him a physical action badass, and so, I admit, I didn’t take Eliot being this badass action hero seriously at first. However, Kane’s acting eventually brought me around.

Also: I totally ship Hardison/Parker/Eliot, but I’m a little more interested in Hardison/Eliot than I am Parker with either of them.

There’s a flashback of Eliot in Serbia. He takes out a room of armed men in order to get a sports card of some kind, and this scene wasn’t one of the ones that brought me around. I just sort of rolled my eyes at it.

One interesting thing about Eliot is he occasionally wears glasses, and I don’t know if they’re reading glasses, if he’s mildly farsighted, or if they’re purely for aesthetics.

This annoys me, but me being annoyed is never going to make TV actually respect how glasses work in real life. In one episode, Eliot steals a doctor’s glasses, and it’s not revealed why the doctor needs them (or if they’re just for aesthetics), but assuming the doctor had an actual prescription in them, there’s a good chance Eliot would have some trouble getting around unless he happened to get lucky and steal a pair with a prescription that actually improved/simply didn’t counteract his natural eyesight.

And yes, I’m still bitter over Tobias Beecher’s glasses completely disappearing after the first season and the lack of explanation of why exactly Will Graham occasionally wore glasses.

Moving on, Parker hangs upside down from somewhere to get her earbud, and her title-card eventually just labels her a thief. Her flashback shows her in an abusive foster home that she blows up after stealing her stuffed bunny back from her abusive foster dad.

Eliot is not impressed with Hardison’s immediate crush on Parker, and he makes a crack about Hardison still living with his mother. Instead of saying anything about his foster Nana or the fact he actually doesn’t currently live with her, Hardison simply replies, “Age of the geek, baby.”

Nate asks if Hardison’s tech is safe, and yes, but also, there might be side-effects.

“You’re precisely why I work alone,” Eliot declares.

Give it 3-to-4 years.

Nate tells them to go on his count, and he warns Parker not to freelance. Eliot assures him they’ve got this.

Yeah, and there goes Parker jumping off the building before the countdown is done.

“Twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag,” Eliot grouchily characterises her.

When they all get inside, however, Eliot tries to proposition her over the comms, but she gets the elevator he and Hardison are standing on going before he can finish his sentence. Heh.

Nate realises something wrong. He advises Parker to count haircuts, and I’m probably not explaining it well, but this is good advice. They realise the guards are doing things early so that they can all watch a sports game.

Have none of these guards heard of tape recording? Do none of them have TIVO at home? A DVR? Streaming online?

The security breach is discovered.

The guards find Hardison, but having taken off his glasses, Eliot takes them all down before Hardison’s bag hits the floor. Yeah, still not impressed by Eliot’s action hero status, although, whoever did the camerawork, editing, and stunt coordination are all awesome.

Hardison is immediately smitten, and briefly smiling, Eliot unloads (? I know about as much when it comes to weapons as I do sports) a gun. “That’s what I do.”

The door Hardison was hacking opens, and the two future husbands share starry-eyes with one another.

Eliot ties up the alive but unconscious guards, because, knocking someone unconscious is never serious in TV, Hardison gets the data and gives the servers a virus, and then, Parker announces the security system has rearmed itself. Eliot declares it’s every man for himself, and I guess he was solely talking to Hardison, but since Parker is part of this, what?

For anyone who read one of my Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. reviews, I will not spend paragraphs gripping, but really, shows? Really?

Moving on, the three bicker, and literally labelling them children, Nate’s all, ‘Listen to me, future daughter and sons-in-law, I’m talking you out of this situation.’

The three all get in an elevator, and Nate says Hardison dies in Plan M. Eliot likes the sound of Plan M, and I’m not sure if future!Eliot wouldn’t punch himself if given the chance for this.

They all change clothes, and Hardison briefly peeks when Parker takes off her top, but otherwise, he and Eliot both turn away.

Escorting a crutch-using, leg-brace wearing, bruised-faced Parker out of the elevator, Eliot and Hardison make the security guys feel bad for gaping at the injured/disabled woman, and the three get safely out.

Nate drives them away, and then, instead of parking the car somewhere and staying inside or finding a diner or a bench, the four stand around outside in a sort-of circle whilst Hardison does things with his laptop.

Hardison wants to geek out about how cool they all were together, and Eliot responds, “One show only, no encores.”

Nate is insistent he isn’t a thief, and Parker’s response is one I like but I really don’t think fits her earlier seasons characterisation, “Come on, Nathan. Tell the truth. Didn’t you have a little bit of fun playing the Black King instead of the White Knight, just this once?”

They all dramatically walk in different directions, and for all it’s a good shot, seriously, sit in the car, find a bench, or go into some all-night diner instead of suspiciously standing around in a circle outside with one guy holding up a laptop.

Later, a drunk/hungover Nate is woken by his phone ringing. Victor is yelling in a building full of people about how the criminal gang he hired didn’t deliver what he hired them for.

I’m not a thief or a hacker or capable of doing any of the physical stuff Eliot does, and I could never plan like Nate does. If I ever tried to screw over a group of people like Victor is doing, well, I’d end up dead. Even if they were no-kill like Team Leverage is, I’d still somehow end up dead.

Also, in real life, common sense and I are often not on speaking terms.

All this said, I maintain Leverage isn’t as based in realism as everyone lauds it to be. It’s not fantastical, and it often presents factual information about the real world, but it’s not about realistically competent characters most of the time. It’s about the protagonists often winning, because, they’re protagonists and antagonists often losing not due to any competence or incompetence but, because, they’re antagonists.

Victor demands Nate go to a certain address in one hour.

Nate does, and he finds Hardison pointing a gun at a nonchalant Eliot. It turns out the safety is on.

So? You never, never, ever, ever point a gun at someone unless you are fully prepared to kill them. Safeties can fail. An unloaded gun can turn out to be loaded. For all I don’t know about weapons, I do know this much.

I really don’t like this part, but I’ll chalk it up to early instalment weirdness.

Nate grabs the gun in a way that a gun should never be grabbed, see above, and he asks if Eliot is armed. Now, Eliot is telling the truth when he answers no, but yeah, trust this person you don’t really know who you do know can do all that Eliot can do to tell the truth about such a thing.

Parker appears, everyone bickers, and then, Nate manically laughs before getting everyone out just before the place explodes.

As they’re fleeing, Hardison trips, and Eliot hauls him up. Aw.

Nate wakes up handcuffed to a hospital bed. Eliot is handcuffed to a chair nearby, because, it’s not as if he couldn’t pick up/drag the chair and possibly use it as a weapon.

In another room, Parker is walking around playing with her undone cuffs, I guess because, separating the four and having a guard assigned to each room wasn’t something anyone thought might be a good idea, and Hardison is also handcuffed to a bed.

They talk to one another through the vents.

Nate asks if they’re been processed, and they all have black ink on their fingertips. By 2008, wasn’t law enforcement doing electronic scanning? I honestly don’t know.

They come up with a plan. Parker makes herself throw up in order to steal a phone, and then, they trick the cops and hospital staff into thinking Hardison is an undercover FBI agent who’s transporting Eliot somewhere.

I’m not sure how this gets Parker and Nate out, but okay. It’s cool they made the black guy the agent and the white southern guy the dangerous criminal.

During this plan, Parker says she doesn’t trust “these guys”, and Nate asks if she trusts him.

Eliot answers with a smile, “Of course. You’re an honest man.”

I’m not sure if this was sarcasm or not, but either way, I don’t buy/get this.

There’s one thing I absolutely don’t like about this show: It can be extremely hit-or-miss with non-slim people, especially women. They’re either villains, jokes, both, or the show will have extras presented neutrally. I like the last. I don’t like it’s either neutral extras or the other three.

There’s a nurse for two or three scenes after Parker throws up who’s plump, and no one makes any comments, there’s no gags involving her, and the fact everyone managed to escape clearly has absolutely nothing to do with her or her performance as a nurse.

However, Victor isn’t exactly slim, a male client is described as literally addicted to tacos, Parker calls a slim woman fat, and slim Sophie utterly humiliates a chubby woman who is a connoisseur of chocolate despite Sophie likely not knowing anywhere near as much as the woman does.

Anyway, everyone escapes.

In Hardison’s place, Eliot declares there’s something wrong with Parker when she’s more upset about not getting paid than almost getting killed. Someone online pointed out her reasoning, though: The security guards would have been doing their jobs if they killed her in an attempt to stop her. She risked her life for money, and then, she didn’t get the money. If Victor tried to kill her after paying her, she likely would have still been angry, but it would have been less personal. A lot of people would kill her if they got the opportunity, and she knows and accepts this as part of the life she lives.

Hardison gives everyone first class tickets to elsewhere places, but Nate convinces them to bring Victor down.

Part of this involves taking his future daughter and sons-in-law to meet their mother/mother-in-law.

Sophie Devereaux is performing horribly on-stage.

The three are incredulous and appalled, but Nate is all, ‘God, I love my future wife.’

Outside, they’re all standing around creepily in a back alley when Sophie comes out. Nate claps, and a flashback shows the two shooting at one another when she was an art thief and he was still in insurance. Her title-card announces: Grifter.

And spellcheck doesn’t recognise ‘grifter’, but then, it doesn’t recognise ‘Nate’ or 'Hardison' either but does recognise the uniquely spelled 'Eliot'.

He says he’s playing her side now, and glancing over at her future daughter and sons-in-law, she’s in. He opens the passenger side door for her, and the kids all climb into the backseat.

Back at Hardison, Eliot has popcorn and beer, and he kicks Hardison’s feet off the table, steps over Parker’s legs, and then, nudges at them with his foot to make her take hers off. Hardison’s orange soda is shown on the table, and Eliot and Sophie recognise each other as dangerous.

On one level, losing anymore kids might fully break her future husband; it’s not really herself she’s worried about, because, she can talk her way out of anything. For right now, he’s mostly for himself. Later, though, he’ll be worried she might be a danger to Hardison and Parker, and this is worse than anyone being a threat to him alone.

The next scene has Sophie meeting Victor, and she’s sporting some sort of African accent.

Whether it’s good or not, I can’t tell. The thing with me is: Throw an actor from Brooklyn in with one from Alabama, and I’m probably not going to realise there’s something odd about their characters growing up in the same house together in Philadelphia. It’s the same for British and Irish accents, and I’ve never heard a Canadian accent I identified as Canadian.

This said, as much as I admire the acting abilities of Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch’s, I really hope none of their future roles ever involve an American accent again. For all I like Everett Ross, there could have been a plausible reason for the character to speak with Freeman’s natural accent. And I don’t really have much of an opinion on Dr Strange, but again, either cast someone with a decent American accent or find a reason for him to speak with Cumberbatch’s natural one.

Back to the scene, Sophie is trying to sell Victor on a business deal of some sort, and listening through the earbuds, everyone is impressed with her skills.

Meanwhile, his secretary’s computer goes plakooy, and Eliot is sent in as IT with a pair of thicker glasses than the ones he was wearing earlier. As he flirts and Sophie grifts, everyone else does things to get the con fully off.

Later, in Hardison’s, Eliot notes Nate looks better, and he probably understands Nate’s psychology better than anyone, even Sophie. He gives his sympathies for Sam, and there’s a painful flashback of Sam just before death.

Then, Eliot says Nate should have kept some of the stolen artwork he found, since, if he had-

And Eliot’s full capacity for being an utter jerk is revealed.

Nate can’t handle this, and he declares they’re absolutely not friends. In this moment, I really don’t blame him.

Eliot’s only response is to sarcastically but accurately point out how Nate has no friends. Seeing Sophie, he goes to give his future in-laws some privacy, and Sophie wants help with her earbud. Nate’s hesitant, but helping her, there’s even more emotional and sexual tension.

The next day, everyone has to get Sophie to Victor before Victor tries to look her up in the fake office’s directory, and Nate starts smashing car windows outside. No one tries to stop him or even apparently sees him, and if cameras caught him doing this and the police tried to arrest him, that’s all handled off-screen.

He knows what this could do to some people’s insurance, and he knows there’s people who wouldn’t even have insurance. Why didn’t Hardison just hack several car alarms? Or set off the sprinklers inside the building? Something that wouldn’t cause innocent people potentially a lot of grief and hardship? What if somebody steals from the damaged cars before owners can arrive?

Also, it would have been kinda funny to me if he broke a window or two and alarms didn’t go off. I’d still feel bad for the people, but not everyone locks/alarms their car.

There’s a meeting with Sophie, Victor, and some black men. For all my nitpicking, this show is too clever for me at times, and I don’t know if these men are an active part of the con or they’re being conned too.

Next is a scene implying Victor has everything figured out. He decides to call in the FBI.

Well, this is actually part of the con, and it’s revealed how they truly conned him. He’s eventually arrested, and Team Leverage are shown wearing FBI jackets as they help the real FBI carry boxes out of Victor’s company’s building.

Later, Nate gives the guy they stole from the data back. In exchange, the guy won’t be sending the law after Team Leverage.

Nate taunts Victor over the phone, and it’s revealed Sophie has bought tons of shoes. Parker asks, “What is it with women and shoes?”

This is a good question I have yet to figure out, but Sophie declares something is wrong with Parker.

After hanging up, the five all meet in another circle outside, and everyone is thrilled with their cut. Eliot has a line in reference to Hardison, “Somebody kiss this man so I don't have to.” Then, they all walk away before the three ducklings return to Nate, and he tries to shoo them away. However, he comes across Sophie, and she’s down for adopting Parker with him and accepting Hardison and Eliot as their sons-in-law.

The last scene has Team Leverage talking to grieving parents. They explain they don’t expect payment from the parents. What they want is to help provide Leverage against the corrupt rich and powerful who terrorise the little people.

Fin.


End file.
